The Body is a River

We all tend to see our bodies as "Frozen sculptures" - solid, fixed, material objects - when in truth they are more like rivers, constantly changing, flowing patterns of intelligence. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus declared, "You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in." The same is true of the body. If you "pinch an inch" around your waist, the fat you are squeezing between your fingers is not the same as it was last month.

Your adipose tissue (fat cells) fill up with fat and empty out constantly, so that all of it is exchanged every three weeks. You acquire a new stomach lining every fife days (the innermost layer of cells is exchanged in a matter of minutes as you digest food). Your skin is new every fife weeks. Your skeleton, seemingly so solid and rigid, is entirely new every three months. In all, the flow of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen is so rapid that you could be renewed in a matter of weeks; it is only the heavier atoms of iron, magnesium, copper, and so on that slow down the process. You appear to be the same outwardly, yet you are like a building whose bricks are constantly being replaced by new ones. Every year, fully 98 percent of the total number of atoms in your body are replaced - this has been confirmed by radioisotope studies at the Oak ridge laboratories in California. This constant stream of change is controlled at the quantum level of the mind-body system, and yet medicine has not taken advantage of this fact - it still is waiting to take the quantum leap.

To change the printout of the body, you must learn to rewrite the software of the mind.